Tune in to HGTV, visit your local bookstore's magazine section, or flip to the 'Homes' section of your weekend newspaper, and it becomes clear: domestic spaces play an immense role in our cultural consciousness. The Domestic Space Reader addresses our collective fascination with houses and homes by providing the first comprehensive survey of the concept across time, cultures, and disciplines.

This pioneering anthology, which is ideal for students and general readers, features writing by key scholars, thinkers, and writers including Gaston Bachelard, Mary Douglas, Le Corbusier, Homi Bhabha, Henri Lefebvre, Mrs. Beeton, Ma Thanegi, Diana Fuss, Beatriz Colomina, and Edith Wharton. Among the many engaging topics explored are: the impact of domestic technologies on family life; the relationship between religion and the home; nomadic peoples and housing; domestic spaces in art and literature; and the history of the bedroom, the kitchen, and the bathroom. The Domestic Space Reader demonstrates how discussions of domestic spaces can help us better understand our inner lives and challenge our perceptions of life in particular times and places.

Chiara Briganti is the academic director for British Programmes of the College of Global Studies at Arcadia University and a visiting research fellow at King's College London.

Chiara Briganti's profile page

Kathy Mezei is a professor in the English Department at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia, and specializes in Canadian Literature. She wrote Cuthbert and the Merpeople one summer while camping on Hornby Island. Every day she would take her daughter, Robin, out in a canoe, tell her an episode, and then hurry back to shore where she would quickly type it up on her portable typewriter.

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‘This anthology would be notably useful for literature students developing an interdisciplinary understanding of domestic space and for those in other disciplines considering architecture’s influence on individual and cultural imaginations.’

Canadian Literature #221: Summer 2014